President Andrew
Harrison sat in his high, straight-backed chair waiting for his
undiplomatically tardy opposite number. As he stared into the
fireplace's contained conflagration he unconsciously attempted to
impose some sense of order on the flickering shadows capering
before him, but he had no more success in that than he had ever
had in imposing a pattern on the remarkable series of events that
had led to this meeting and whatever would follow.
Hardly more than a year ago he had been
the Junior Senator from Nebraska. Now he was President of the
United States. To this day, that title - his title, President of
the United States - still evoked the image of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, and no other. But when the Japanese surrendered and
The Great Pacific War was won at last, FDR suddenly announced his
retirement and as a last exercise of his extraordinary political
power had virtually anointed his own successor: Andrew Harrison
III.
Right now the sitting President wished
that Franklin still had his old job. The whole world might pay a
terrible cost for any mistakes made here today.
There were others, seemingly better
qualified, that he could have picked, Harrison mused, but I was
from the West and could corral our own New Isolationists, and
maybe take a little wind out of the sails of the Western
Republicans. Someone from Pennsylvania, Ohio, or Missouri just
would not have fit the bill. And so here he was.
Fifteen minutes past three. Forty-five
minutes late. It was deliberate of course, but annoying for all
that. Before long he would have to take official notice.
To distract himself, and because it
stirred a memory of another clock and another mantle, Harrison
stood up and examined the clock over this one. Lincoln had his
log cabin, he thought, and I my sod hut on the prairie. His
campaign managers had made much of that during the '44 campaign:
the farmer's son versus the slick New York City lawyer. It had
played very well, and rather remarkably it was all true.
This mantle clock reminded him of his
mother's, precious memento of her elegant life back East. It was
one of the few heirlooms that had survived the journey to
northwestern Nebraska. She had kept the brass frame of that clock
polished to a shine that rivaled burnished gold, and it stood out
like a diamond in their earth-walled hut. As a child he had stood
before it, watching the hands trace their endless course,
carrying with them a mystery of time and memory, and all the
promise and pain that such mysteries held.
Before he was fully grown it had held
other memories as well, of its chiming the midnight hour while
tuberculosis took her from them, his father holding his hand as
she slipped into the night. He could remember its chiming the
next day as he and his father made her coffin and together lifted
it into the wagon to take her up the knoll to the family resting
place, where two sisters now had their mother back again.
That clock, so ornate and out of place
with its gaudy Victorian styling, held the place of honor on the
fireplace mantle in the Oval Office. He smiled at the thought.
The weekly ritual of winding it always brought to him the hint of
a memory of a childhood caress from a mother now thirty years at
rest beneath the Nebraska sod. For those few moments it was as if
she were still watching over him and demanding excellence in her
stern yet gentle way. He had wound it before coming here; it
would still be marking its course and his when he returned.
A door opened. Resisting a momentary
impulse to behave like an ordinary mortal, Harrison deliberately
kept his back turned. After several seconds a throat cleared
impatiently. The President of the United States remained
motionless - than finally turned and stared unwaveringly into the
eyes of Adolf Hitler.
He had met him yesterday, but that was
mere ritual. Even after the press had been shepherded out, there
were still all the staffers, the military liaisons, the aides,
and the routine of sitting at the long table exchanging genial
platitudes. Now they were alone and it was for real.
He studied his enemy closely. He had aged
a great deal since the accident, but his were still the cold
remorseless eyes of a shark on its unceasing search for prey. His
shoulders were hunched, the left side of his face bore a blaze of
scars from the plane crash that had almost killed him on December
6, 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor.
Neither Harrison nor the rest of the
world could say for certain how different it all might have been
if that plane crash had never happened. But Hitler knew. And
Roosevelt had guessed about it, often speculating that if Hitler
had been in charge during those crucial weeks in December of 1941
Germany might well have declared war on the United States. When
Roosevelt spoke of it, it was in an almost wistful tone, as if he
had actually wanted a two-front war. The thought of such a fight
made Harrison shudder, but then again, things would have been
settled now, one way or the other. Much as he may have wanted it,
Roosevelt had not even attempted to get Congress to declare war
against Germany. Congress had demanded blood in the Pacific, but
thought that one war at a time was quite enough.
The plane crash had dashed Roosevelt's
hope that Hitler would take care of the problem for him. Hitler
had spent several weeks in a coma, during which time a
triumvirate composed of Göring, Goebbels, and Halder had taken
charge. Realizing that they were on the edge of disaster in
Russia, far from declaring war on the USA, the three immediately
declared an end to unrestricted submarine warfare in the
Atlantic, thereby blocking Roosevelt's hope for a final
provocation. Next they had pulled off a masterful strategic
withdrawal along the entire Russia front, falling back before the
offensive of the Russian Siberian divisions.
Had the German army followed the dark
romanticism of Hitler's vision and never relinquished an inch of
conquered territory, it was generally agreed, the Wehrmacht
would have pretty much ceased to exist in the East. Instead, the
Russians wound up exhausted and overextended, and the Nazi
offensive was renewed in the spring. Meanwhile America, Russia's
only real hope, had become fully committed in the Pacific. Before
Hitler had recovered enough to resume power, the ruling
triumvirate had managed to ameliorate and block the worst of
Himmler's SS atrocities as well, committing the Reich to a
quasi-independent Ukraine. Result: sixty divisions of Ukrainian
and anti-Communist Russians in the Nazi ranks. It did not matter
that after the war the SS gained back its power in the eastern
occupied lands. The war by then was already won. The result was
inevitable. In '43 Russia threw in the towel, the Churchill
government collapsed, and shortly thereafter England agreed to a
remarkably lenient armistice.
A happy Congress breathed a sigh of
relief and congratulated itself for steadfastly ignoring
Roosevelt's urgent suggestion after Pearl Harbor to move more
forcefully to the aid of England - to say nothing of aiding the
Communists. The military, of course, was pleased with the result
as well, since they could concentrate fully on the Japanese. This
was especially true for the Navy; the total conquest and absolute
submission of the Japanese was a personal thing for every
American sailor from King and Nimitz on down.
So now it is I who must deal with this
man.
"How do you come to speak such
fluent German?" Hitler finally asked, in heavily accented
English.
"I studied at Heidelberg before the
First War," Harrison replied. "Given world events, it
seemed a good idea to maintain fluency."
"Good! My English is terrible,"
Hitler responded in his own language. Apparently now satisfied
with Harrison's linguistic abilities, Hitler nodded a curt
dismissal to the uniformed aide who had entered with him.
Harrison motioned to the small round
table by the fire. Hitler preceded him to it and sat down.
"So. Did you like Heidelberg?"
Hitler asked.
"It was one of the happier times of
my life. I stayed in touch with several of my professors after
the war, until they were arrested in '34."
"Student days," Hitler said
with a sigh, ignoring the hint of anger. "I never had them.
My school was the trenches of Verdun and the Somme."
"I was in those trenches too,"
Harrison replied coolly. "Perhaps we . . . saw one
another."
"No, no, I never saw an American
unit." He waved his hand dismissively. "So what did you
learn of us Germans? At school, I mean."
"I learned that the German passion
for organized efficiency is the most intense of any people on the
planet."
Hitler smiled. "That includes
military efficiency."
"Yes. For good or ill, Germans are
very efficient."
"You studied history, didn't
you?"
"Yes. I specialized in 19th-century
Germany, as it happens."
Could it be that Hitler had not immersed
himself in the personal history of the American president he was
about to meet? On reflection Harrison decided it was not
possible. So what was he trying to accomplish with this? Soften
him up with kindness and attention after the initial insult of
being forty-five minutes late? God knew that tyrants had
underestimated America and its leaders before, but this was
ridiculous.
"Why are you not then a
professor?"
Oh, I was years from my doctorate, not
even sure I wanted one. An opportunity for foreign study had come
up and I took it, is all. Then came the war. Like you, I was
gassed and spent nearly a year in the hospital. By the time I
came home I had become more focused on practical things. I
completed my Bachelor's and that was that.
The President laughed inwardly. What harm
in letting Hitler think he was cozened? It was plausible enough.
Other world leaders had fallen for the Hitlerian charm, and
Americans were notorious suckers for pretended empathy.
At that moment, however, Hitler again
changed tack. "If you know our history, then you know why
we must be efficient at war. We have no natural boundaries. Only
the strength of our army stands between us and the East. As it
was in Frederick's time, so it remains today. We are the
guardians of the West. The world should not forget that.
"As to the land we took, it was
being used haphazardly; we have already doubled prewar crop
production in Poland and will do far better in Russia. It was our
destiny to control those lands."
"Are you presenting a justification
for your conquests?"
Hitler smiled. "I don't need to
justify an accomplished fact, any more than you Americans need to
justify to me your treatment of your Indians.. We control Russia
to the Volga, except for the pocket we permitted Stalin around
Moscow and back through Gorky. In the west our natural border has
been restored and the French are now our allies. On both
frontiers we have accomplished what I set out to do."
"Africa?"
"What concern is Africa to either
you or me? It's a land of barbarian Untermenschen. Let the
French and the Italians control it. It suits them."
"If it is of no interest, then why
did you take Southwest Africa and Tanganyika as part of the
armistice agreement with England?"
"It was the final stain of
Versailles. It had to be rectified."
Harrison hesitated to show too much
concern about that region. Whenever the Germans became fully
aware of the value of the Belgian Congo's uranium deposits, the
richest in the world, that would be soon enough. No need to help
them along. "Let's not take our time rehashing the past. I'm
more concerned with the future, particularly the future of our
two countries."
Hitler stood up and walked over to the
giant map that lined the far side of the room.
Such a strange map. Germany was a red
smear reaching across the Rhine to engulf what had once been
Poland and Lithuania. Latvia and Estonia were marked with the
orange of allies as was Occupied Russia and the new puppet state
of the Ukraine.
Yugoslavia had disappeared. Slovenia and
Dalmatia had been thrown to Italy, while the other provinces had
been divided into small independent states ruled from Berlin.
Hungary, Bulgaria, and Rumania had also taken small pieces of the
former Yugoslavia from their master's table.
In the West, Holland, Luxembourg and
Denmark were now states within the greater Reich. France had been
rewarded for its complaisance with continued existence - as a
lapdog whose coastal harbors and airfields from Brest to Dunkirk
were occupied by German forces. In all of Europe west of the
Urals, only Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Sweden had some
semblance of true independence - and all four knew that they
existed now only because the man who stood before the map willed
it so. Sure, it would take eighty divisions to conquer the Swiss,
but what were eighty divisions to Hitler in a world at
"peace"?
But still there was England, marked in
green, pugnaciously defiant off the coast. "I don't like
this talk of Churchill coming back as Prime Minister,"
Hitler said, his eyes locked on the one aspect of this new map of
Europe that he didn't like.
Harrison shrugged, said nothing.
"He caused the last crisis, you
know."
"Oh? I thought it was your invasion
of Poland."
"Poland was needed for living space
and as preparation against Russia. We had no quarrel with
England, and wanted none. It was that damnable Churchill who
pushed it even after I carefully allowed his army to escape and
offered him peace after Dunkirk. Now the stupid British want him
back again!"
"And what do you propose to do about
it if his party wins the election?"
"Rather, I should ask what you would
do," Hitler replied.
Harrison was blunt. "If you attack
England we will declare war on you - and this time we won't be
diverted by affairs in the Pacific."
Hitler laughed. "Your Congress is
tired of war, and your people are too. You Americans have your
peace and want to keep it. I don't think your war mongering would
garner much support."
"And I think it will," Harrison
replied, even though he and the man facing him both knew it was a
lie. If America had one lasting tradition, it was that of
immediately demobilizing after a war. The Navy had already seen
its vessels reduced by nearly half, and the Army had gone from
thirty-five divisions to twelve - eight of which were still on
occupation duty in the Pacific, or holding positions along the
China coast to support the Nationalists. In the first flush of
both electoral and military victory Harrison had not resisted
demobilization very much. He now was coming to understand the
enormity of his error. Half a navy and four ready divisions to
face the Beast that crouched over Europe.
"May I recite to you what your
current operational levels are?" Hitler said in a voice so
cordial as to constitute mockery. The man's intuitive grasp of
his interlocutor's mental processes filled Harrison with sour
admiration. It was as if he did indeed have the ability to read
an opponent's mind. Harrison recalled vaguely that breeding for
telepathic ability was a principal tenet of the demented Nazi
ideology. Could all that have happened to the world be a direct
result of this man mistaking his own intuitive genius for telepathy?
"But there's no need of this,"
Hitler continued, his voice again shifting to a
"genuinely" friendly tone. "Our interests are, in
fact, the same. As to our points of disagreement, they are
minor."
"And those interests are?"
"Peace. I want peace the same as
you. Nowhere on this Earth," - he pointed back towards the
map - "is there any geopolitical crisis point between us.
Our interests don't extend beyond Europe. Yours are defined by
the Monroe Doctrine, a document we are willing to respect."
"Though you lent material support
Argentine Fascists, are making strong efforts in Mexico, and the
French are building up their base in Martinique."
"Friendly diplomacy, nothing more,
and as for the French, quarrel with them, not me, about
Martinique. I could counter that only last month we caught one of
your OSS people in the Ukraine. We shot him of course."
"I know nothing about that,"
Andrew lied. The man had been their key contact into the Jewish
underground and was instrumental in gathering evidence on what
the Jewish community had begun calling the Holocaust. The agent
had managed to get out several hundred photos and four and a half
minutes of grainy eight-millimeter film showing a death factory
near Kiev. The film, in its nightmare images of mounds of bodies,
black smoke, and roaring crematoriums, had run counter to
everything he had ever believed and loved about a German culture
that could produce Goethe, Beethoven and Schiller.
"What I do know something about is
this," Harrison said coldly. He reached into his briefcase,
pulled out a folder of photographs, and tossed them onto the
table. Hitler walked over and looked down at them with an
attitude of polite curiousity. When he recognized them for what
they were, he waved his hand disdainfully and turned back to the
map.
"Cheap Jewish and Communist
propaganda. Staged and passed to that agent you know nothing
about. Shocking that they would kill so many people for the sake
of verisimilitude, don't you think?"
"There's hundreds more like these,
and thousands of pages of testimony as to what your SS is doing
in Russia and the Ukraine."
Hitler turned, looked straight at
Harrison, and smiled. "I know nothing about that."
"But we do!" Harrison
slammed his fist on the table.
Hitler, for one brief second, seemed
shocked by Harrison's reaction. Then he came back to the table
and leaned against it, bracing his balled fists on its edge.
"Do you want to have a war over these lies?" With a
rude brush of his hand he swept the photos off the table. "I
doubt, President Harrison, that you'd get more than a hundred
votes in your Congress, most of them already in the pockets of
New York Jewish financiers, who are the true enemies. And you
do not have the power to declare war on your own." He
laughed softly at that absurd weakness.
"I am going to make this information
public."
"Go ahead. A fair number of your
people will applaud."
Harrison sat back in his chair,
physically sickened, by the photographs, the reality that
underlay them, and most of all by the almost playful nondenial.
Perhaps that explained his next, ill-advised words.
"You have no idea of the character
of Americans," he said in an almost conversational tone.
"You have no idea of what we are, or what we stand for. We
might not be able to stop what you're doing inside the land you
control, not yet, but by God we won't let it spread."
"You - you? - threaten das
Reich?" Hitler swelled like a venemous reptile. His
rages were legendary. "Do you think we fear your mongrel
nation? I hope you intended to start a war here today, because
that is what you have done!" His fist too slammed the table.
Louder, harder. He turned to leave.
Harrison watched as he stalked toward the
oak door at the far side of the room. He knew it was histrionics,
part of the famous act. He also knew that Hitler would back up
those histrionics with all the power of what was at this moment
the world's greatest military machine. As for him, his
administration was barely ten months old, and he was less than
popular. The Isolationists and others who smelled a chance at
last to undo all that Roosevelt had accomplished would surely
accuse him of creating a new crisis as a diversion. As for his
own party, they still looked to FDR as their leader, and might
well accuse his successor of triggering an incident out of lack
of experience or, worse yet, simple stupidity. His support in the
military was nonexistent; given the current state of military
preparedness they knew too well what odds they would face.
Harrison stood and uttered a single word,
thereby performing the most difficult act of his life.
"Wait."
Hitler turned, even as his hand touched
the door.
"Did you say something?"
"Let us continue with our
discussion."
"Why? You have made your intentions
clear."
"I don't want a war. The purpose of
this meeting was to ensure that we don't have one."
Hitler nodded slowly, as if his better,
more statesmanlike self were coming to the fore. "That was
my intention as well," he finally said, and walked halfway
back to the table. "How then shall we have peace?"
Harrison drew a long slow breath.
"We need to find common ground. First you must understand
that England's continued independent existence is a vital
interest of the United States. You will find my congressional
support not so flimsy after all, if England is attacked."
"That at least I can
understand." Hitler paused theatrically. "Very well
then," he continued grandly, as if offering a major
concession: "England may live - and keep her tottering
Empire too. But they, and you, must cease all interference with
the Reich's internal concerns. That is our vital
interest."
"There are also matters to be
discussed regarding Africa, Argentina and Mexico, and the right
of refugees to leave Europe."
"Details. But your OSS, your
clandestine support of terrorists, your pressure against our
French allies over the expansion of their military airfields in
Martinique, must stop."
"Yes . . . our staffs can deal with
such things later," Harrison replied, suddenly very weary.
He wanted to sit again, but would not while Hitler stood before
him.
"Then we are agreed in
principle," Hitler announced. "There are grounds for
mutual understanding between us."
"Yes." Harrison had known from
the beginning that something like this was about the best he
could have hoped for. Still, he had the nagging feeling that
Franklin would have done a better job, and not left Hitler in a
mood to gloat.
"Good. After dinner we'll talk again
and our staffs can start their work."
"Very well."
"Your German is excellent,"
Hitler said, as if they were now close friends again. "Our
universities are still the best. In fact - do you know
Speer?"
"I know of him."
"My Minister of Strategic Planning
and Industry. Like you, he is a Heidelberg graduate. He heard me
speak there, back in the early days, and joined the party. Your
university has provided some of my best planners. Since they took
over in '42 Speer and his staff have worked wonders."
"I'm sure they have," Harrison
replied.
In fact some of those wonders they had
produced were now the American president's chief concern; the new
generation of German super weapons were for the moment outpacing
nearly every aspect of American military technology, especially
in rocketry and the secret weapons of the Luftwaffe.
"You will meet Speer tonight. You
can catch up on old times."
"He was there after I was. I don't
think we'll have much in common," Harrison replied coolly,
struggling to regain some semblance of control of the flow of
events.
"This evening, then," Hitler
replied curtly over his shoulder, as if issuing an order as he
turned and stalked out of the room.
Harrison turned and went out the opposite
door and stepped into the antechamber where his staff was
gathered. "Gentlemen," he announced coldly,
"before long we're going to have to fight that son of a
bitch, and we'd better be ready."
* * *
Hitler stormed into the suite where his inner circle waited. As those waiting for him came to their feet he snarled, "We return to Germany tomorrow. Operation Arminius goes forward."